The Brief

Summer is in full swing, which means so are many of the ants, bees, and other bugs in our backyards and, well, pretty much everywhere.

While you can rush to your local pest control company for various chemicals, baits, and insecticides after a bug catches you by surprise, there’s also plenty of steps you can take at home to keep them at bay and away from your living space.

Plus, it can also be an opportunity to learn more about the smaller-scale wildlife we’re sharing the city with.

Here’s some tips for handling the six-legged summer rush.

Why do we seem to see more bugs this time of year?

Insects, like some humans, are more active in warmer weather.

Brian Brown, the former curator of entomology at the Natural History Museum of L.A. County for more than 30 years, told LAist they’re typically looking for food, matching with a mate, or migrating.

“What limits insects in our area is water, because it's so dry around here,” he said. “So things like the Argentine ants come into houses looking for water often.”

But because most bugs don’t live that long, Brown said they’re cramming in all those life-sustaining steps at the same time as they reach adulthood.

Their insect instincts are also partly to blame.

They’re naturally drawn to light areas, Brown noted, which can cause them to crowd around windows and interior spaces.

“We take advantage of that when we put out insect traps that we have, like the Malaise traps we've used in people's backyards, that insects fly into and then they just move up to the top of the trap,” he said. “Inside houses — they're like big, huge insect traps if you leave your doors open.”

Tips for keeping bugs at bay

Alan Travis, branch manager with Wise Pest Control based in Old Town Pasadena, inspects a hallway for insects.

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Alan Travis, branch manager for Wise Pest Control in Pasadena, told LAist that the summer season into late September is their busiest time for business.

“It's very hot, it's very arid, it's very dry, and you know, we have a multitude of pests emerging,” he said.

They’ve been getting a lot of calls for hornets, wasps, and other stinging insects as well as American roaches, which Travis noted like to crawl in through windows, doors, and baseboards.

However, he said there’s a lot of DIY remedies you can do if you’re not a big fan of sharing your space with them.

What to do for outdoor spaces

For the outside areas, keep moisture to a minimum, Travis said. That means making sure your hoses aren’t dripping, spigots are shut tight, and any old fountains or unused pools aren’t soaking in standing water.

“If you can eliminate that, you'll eliminate 99% of your issues when it comes to pests,” he said.

Take a close look at the foliage around your property. Vines creeping up the walls or a tree leaning into the roof can very quickly become a “superhighway for just about anything from roof rats all the way down to ants,” he added.

What to do about them inside

For indoors, keeping your sinks wiped out, bathtubs clean, and food residue to a minimum should help.

“One of the biggest conducive conditions that I see in people's homes when they have German roaches is the hood that sits above the stove is just covered in grease,” Travis said.

And while you might not be able to seal up every single small crack and crevice around your home, limiting the routes from the outside and making sure there’s not much to attract insects on the inside can make a big difference.

Learning to live together

With that being said, not many bugs in the L.A. area are really dangerous to people.

Widow spiders are certainly the exception, and structurally speaking, termites, too. But aside from those, Brown said he wouldn’t be in a big hurry to get rid of any other insects “unless there were huge numbers of them.”

If you want to try to keep them away from the inside of your home, consider creating an outdoor insect area instead.

For example, drilling holes into a block of wood will attract native bees into your backyard, which he added you can see for yourself at the Natural History Museum’s Nature Gardens.

“It always amazes me that when I show people insects, at first they might be scared, but after they learn a little bit about them, they become so interested, so animated,” Brown said. “Once you learn something about an insect, and you see them everywhere, and you start to understand that they are part of the environment, and there are not all things that you want to get rid of.”

What to do if you still can’t stand it

Whether it’s a single spider in the kitchen or a thousand roaches in the roof, calling a pest control company depends on your own personal threshold for cohabitating with crawlers.

“Some people are OK with a couple of ants on the counter to wipe them off and kind of go about their day,” Travis said. “And then, you know, we'll get the other side of the spectrum where they see one roach crawling up the wall and they're ready to burn the house down and move.”

Edward Oueilhe, general manager of Wise Pest Control, told LAist that it can be quite difficult to know where to turn when you’re anxious about antennaed roommates.

Reviews can be deceiving, he said, so pay attention to how a company communicates.

“A lot of folks in this industry, they'll provide a service and then, you know, for lack of a better way to phrase it, they may disappear,” Oueilhe said.

He recommends making sure a pest control company is responsive, has reasonable availability, and would be willing to follow up if another insect intruder pops up a few days later.

“Make sure that the company is going to take care of you,” Oueilhe said. “More importantly, when they say they're going to do something, they do it.”

A new and returning slate of TV shows and straight-to-streaming movies are heading your way this spring, with a good number of them set here in Los Angeles (and one in Orange County).

From (yet another!) comedy about the entertainment industry — this one starring Keanu Reeves, Cameron Diaz and Jonah Hill — to one set (and filmed in) Fullerton — starring Elle Fanning and Michelle Pfeiffer, and based on the popular novel of the same name.

Outcome (April 10, Apple TV)

Keanu Reeves and Martin Scorsese in "Outcome," premiering April 10, 2026 on Apple TV.

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This dark comedy was co-written and directed by Jonah Hill, who also plays Hollywood mega star Reef Hawk’s (Keanu Reeves) crisis lawyer in the film. After Hawk finds himself blackmailed with the release of a video that could destroy his career, he sets off on an apology tour in the hopes of stopping the extortion plot.

Matt Bomer and Cameron Diaz play Hawk’s friends, alongside a star-studded cast including Susan Lucci, Martin Scorsese, Drew Barrymore, Laverne Cox and comedians Roy Wood Jr., Atsuko Okatsuka and David Spade.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles (April 15, Apple TV)

Nicole Kidman in "Margo's Got Money Troubles."

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Apple TV

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Based on the hit 2024 novel of the same name, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is about a 19-year-old aspiring writer and single mom (Elle Fanning) who lives in Fullerton and turns to OnlyFans to make ends meet.

Margo’s mom, an ex-Hooters waitress, is played by Michelle Pfeiffer, and her dad, a former pro wrestler, is played by Nick Offerman (with Nicole Kidman playing an old wrestling buddy of his).

The show was filmed in Los Angeles, downtown Fullerton and on the Fullerton College campus, with over $50,000 of the proceeds reportedly going to a scholarship fund.

Funny AF (April 20, Netflix)

Kevin Hart in Funny AF.

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The reality competition show Funny AF is only partially filmed/set in Los Angeles (with auditions also in New York and Chicago), but we’re including it on this list because the finale is set to take place in Los Angeles at the Netflix is a Joke Festival.

Comedian Kevin Hart hosts this search for “the next stand-up superstar,” with help from guest judges including Kumail Nanjiani, Chelsea Handler and Keegan-Michael Key.

The winner, ultimately chosen from a list of finalists by audience votes, will get their own Netflix stand-up special.

Jerry West: The Logo (April 16, Prime Video)

Head coach Jerry West of the Los Angeles Lakers looks on from the bench during an NBA basketball game circa 1977 at The Forum in Inglewood, California. West coached the Lakers from 1976-79.

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Getty Images North America

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Another slight outlier, we’re calling this documentary L.A.-based because of the Lakers connection. Jerry West: The Logo is about the All-Star Los Angeles Lakers player and executive whose silhouette was the basis for the NBA logo.

Directed by Kenya Barris (black-ish, BlackAF), the film features the final interviews West participated in before his passing in 2024. Other interviewees include Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, Shaquille O’Neill, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant.

Returning shows, also with SoCal locations

Hacks (April 9, HBO Max)

The fifth and final season of Hacks (HBO Max) premieres this week. The season was partially filmed in L.A., along with Las Vegas, New York and Paris. A side note on the show’s L.A. filming locations: the Altadena home that was featured as the “side mansion” of lead character Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) burned down in the 2025 Eaton Fire.

Euphoria (April 12, HBO Max)

The show, returning for a third season (which may be its last) is set in the fictional city of East Highland but is largely shot in and around Los Angeles. Zendaya returns to her Emmy-winning role of Rue, along with supporting cast members Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi.

Beef (April 16, Netflix)

Much of the first season of the Netflix series, starring Ali Wong and Steven Yeun as strangers who meet through a road rage incident, filmed on location in the San Fernando Valley and Koreatown. Season 2 involves an entirely new story and cast, including Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac, and was filmed at least partially in downtown Ojai.

Running Point (April 23, Netflix)

The series where Kate Hudson plays a woman who’s unexpectedly put in charge of her family’s professional basketball team (inspired in part by the real-life Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss) films in L.A. and is also set here.

The Comeback (March 22, HBO Max)

The Comeback has already come back (in this latest iteration — its third and final season — last month), but new episodes of the Hollywood satire starring Lisa Kudrow are still coming out on Sundays.

Los Angeles leaders could soon make changes to the city’s embattled “mansion tax.” But some housing advocates, who blame the tax for a slowdown in apartment development, say the new attempts at reform don’t go far enough.

The city’s Housing Department released a report last week recommending the City Council make four changes to voter-approved Measure ULA, a tax on real estate sales of $5.3 million or more.

The changes, described by the Housing Department as “narrowly focused,” mainly deal with the financing and regulation of affordable housing projects funded by Measure ULA. The department recommended the City Council approve those changes by early fall so loans for new affordable housing projects can close later this year.

Mott Smith, an adjunct professor of real estate at USC and a critic of the tax, said the reforms proposed in the report could fix overly restrictive spending rules. But he said they don’t address the tax’s broader impact on housing development across the city.

“This is really a form of admission that ULA is not working as designed,” Smith said. “It's frankly about time that the city admits this because we're never going to fix it if they can't admit there's a problem.”

The report’s conclusions were reviewed and endorsed by the citizen oversight committee tasked with monitoring Measure ULA’s outcomes. Joe Donlin, director of the United to House L.A. coalition, said supporters are in favor of the proposed changes.

“ULA was written with flexibility to make these exact kinds of amendments,” Donlin said. “We always knew that there would need to be adjustments along the way, and we continue to support efforts to optimize Measure ULA in any way possible.”

How the tax has worked so far

Since taking effect, Measure ULA has raised more than $1 billion for tenant aid programs and affordable housing construction. Before voters approved the tax in 2022, proponents said it could produce 26,000 homes in its first decade. So far, the tax has funded the construction of about 800 homes, according to supporters.

Tax proponents say thousands of new homes are entering the development pipeline. Last year, the city began taking applications for $387 million in funds for housing development and preservation. But according to the Housing Department report, affordable housing lenders have told the city that Measure ULA requirements can discourage them from funding projects.

Based on those concerns, the report recommends changes that would:

• Exempt projects built by affordable housing developers from paying the tax
• Ensure terms for other sources of public funding don’t conflict with terms for Measure ULA funding 
• Allow foreclosed projects to be sold to other developers
• Let building owners increase rents if they lose rental subsidies

Azeen Khanmalek, executive director of Abundant Housing L.A., said those changes would help unlock Measure ULA funding but wouldn’t do much to convince market-rate developers to return to L.A.

“The biggest thing that we don't see in this report is around addressing the impact measure ULA is having on multi-family housing production across the income spectrum,” Khanmalek said.

Several economic studies have concluded that because the so-called “mansion tax” applies to new apartment buildings — not just mansions — development has slowed in L.A. more than in nearby cities.

Tax supporters dispute those findings, blaming high interest rates and other macroeconomic factors for slower building in L.A.

‘Mansion tax’ fight headed for the ballot

The proposed changes come at a time when Measure ULA has come under fire, with multiple efforts to reform the tax — or invalidate it — likely to appear on the November ballot.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has turned in signatures for a ballot measure to overturn such taxes statewide.

Meanwhile, the L.A. City Council has set up a committee to develop potential reforms for the November ballot that would alter but not eliminate the tax. The new report from the housing department has been referred to that committee, but it has not yet been scheduled for a vote.

Miguel Santana, president of the California Community Foundation, said he and other business leaders, academics and affordable housing developers recently formed a new coalition — called Mend It, Don’t End It — to support proposals such as a 15-year tax exemption for new apartment buildings.

“ULA has created circumstances where investors are deciding not to invest in Los Angeles and are investing in surrounding communities,” Santana said. “We know that at the crux of the affordable housing crisis is supply and to be able to respond to that issue.”

A federal judge ordered the Department of Homeland Security to stop using “coercive” and threatening language to convince unaccompanied immigrant children to agree to deportation, court documents show.

The judge said earlier this week that by using threats of prosecution and coercive language, the U.S. government violated a 40-year-old court order that bans immigration agents from attempting to coerce unaccompanied children to voluntarily leave the country after being detained.

In a separate order, the court also denied government lawyers’ request to end those same longstanding protections.

The two decisions were issued Monday by Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald, who wrote in the orders that the government’s threat of prolonged detention for immigrant children who choose not to self-deport “disturbingly mirrors the testimony” of Jose Antonio Perez-Funez, whose trial in 1985 led the court to first order the protections for children the following year. Perez-Funez and others in that class action case testified that they were not informed of their rights to apply for bail or asylum, leading them to involuntarily waive their rights while they were detained by immigration agents as children.

Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer for the nonprofit law firm Public Counsel has been representing immigrant children who were detained by the government for decades and helped win the 1986 court order in the Perez-Funez case.

He said the case has now shown new evidence that the Trump administration has no intention of respecting the rule of law.

The administration’s goal, as Rosenbaum sees it, “is to amp up [deportation] statistics of children who represent no threat to the national interest, who are among the least culpable individuals on the planet.”

LAist reached out to DHS for comment but has not heard back.

The language that has been banned

Last October, LAist reported that DHS had begun targeting unaccompanied children with a “voluntary option” to return them to their countries of origin. Through court documents in the current case, more has been confirmed about how this so-called “voluntary option” was actually presented to children.

Unaccompanied children who are detained for suspected immigration violations are first held by DHS, before generally being turned over to Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. At ORR, children are required by federal law to be provided a confidential legal consultation within 10 days, along with other support.

Court documents show DHS was presenting children with the option to self-deport, along with threats of prosecution and prolonged detainment if they refused, before they were transferred to ORR and guaranteed the chance to speak with an attorney.

Fitzgerald wrote that presenting this ultimatum to children violated the 1986 court order.

“It is difficult to imagine a scenario more coercive than the one faced by [unaccompanied immigrant children] in the 72 hours before they are transferred into ORR custody,” Fitzgerald wrote in court documents, “particularly for noncitizen children who likely do not know whether they possess any rights at all.”

According to evidence presented in court, children were told that if they did not accept voluntary deportation, they would be detained “for a prolonged period of time” and if they turned 18 years old while in custody they would “be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for removal.”

They were also told they may be “barred from legally applying for a visa” and that their sponsor in the U.S. “may be subject to criminal prosecution” if they didn’t agree to voluntary deportation.

This information was read to children or presented to them in a document DHS called the “UAC Pathway Processing Advisal”, but Rosenbaum told LAist he sees even the document’s name as misleading.

 ”It wasn't an advisal, it was a coercive document,” Rosenbaum said. The government has admitted it used the document since September 2025, according to the court order that now bans its use.

How did it come to this?

Rosenbaum said that after the 1986 court order, which also requires unaccompanied children to be allowed telephone access to relatives or legal support, organizations like Public Counsel and  the National Immigration Law Center monitored the government’s compliance with the order.

Other than a few exceptions, he said, the injunction had been followed until recent years.

“  When the Trump administration began its immigration activities in the second term of the president,  that all changed,” Rosenbaum said, “and it changed in a hurry.”

Court records show that DHS notified the court last November that they would be asking for the 1986 court ordered protections for children in the department’s custody to be ended. When organizations monitoring compliance with the order saw this, Rosenbaum said they investigated and found that in nearly all circumstances, children were no longer allowed to talk to lawyers and were being coerced to take voluntary departures from the country.

Despite the court order, Rosenbaum said, children were “separated from family, separated from their communities and separated from their constitutional rights.”

Peter McGraw, deputy legal director at the National Immigration Law Center, told LAist that the court order was issued to specifically protect children’s Fifth Amendment rights to due process.

He said that when unaccompanied children arrive in the U.S., they don’t have an adult there with them to help them understand their decisions about whether to pursue a number of protections that may keep them from being deported.

“ What due process requires is that the government provide children with notice of their ability to apply for asylum or for other protections — withholding from removal or protection from removal under the convention against torture — to ensure that they are not sent back to countries where they would be in danger,” McGraw said.

The Aquarium of the Pacific is putting out a call for donations to raise $50,000 for a surgery to save the front flipper of its newest green sea turtle, Meatloaf.

The 240-pound turtle was taken to the aquarium in January after being found entangled in fishing line and rope in the San Gabriel River.

For two months, she has undergone rehabilitation and several surgeries to nurse her front-right flipper back to health. Dr. Lance Adams, the aquarium’s director of veterinary services, said the plan is to keep Meatloaf for at least another six months as they redress her wounds.

Dr. Lance Adams watches Meatloaf, a green sea turtle, swim in a rehabilitation tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach on Wednesday. The turtle was rescued from the San Gabriel River after she got tangled in fishing line and rope.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Wide as a manhole cover and several times the size of the facility’s former tenant, Porkchop, Meatloaf is the latest ward at the aquarium’s newly expanded turtle rehabilitation center — one of two able to care for them in Southern California.

Right now, Meatloaf’s swollen flipper is more than twice the size it should be. Adams said aquarium staff repeatedly have cleaned out the wound and used a number of methods to drain it. Past surgeries were done to remove scar tissue that had built up.

But Meatloaf’s fluid buildup, called edema, persists and likely will require reconstructive surgery. It’s hard to tell, Adams said, as turtles are slow to heal.

Turtles tended to at the aquarium include loggerheads, leatherbacks, ridleys and green sea turtles, which arrive on the coast and warmer waters each summer to mate, nest and battle natural and human-made threats: speedboats, water skiers, baited hooks, urban runoff, tons of garbage and harassment.

Green sea turtles like Meatloaf can grow up to five feet long and weigh 500 pounds. They typically have tropical haunts — sandy beaches along the Mexican coast where they lay eggs.

But in recent decades, the chunky oddballs have continued to wander upstream, usually in search of food, toward the San Gabriel River’s mouth in Long Beach. Aquarium officials say there can be a dozen to nearly 100 turtles in the river at a time.

They eat almost anything they can clamp their mouths on, including snails, eel grass and — to the ire of scientists — rotting garbage along the waterway floor.

It’s an unfortunate circumstance that volunteers with the aquarium’s Southern California Sea Turtle Monitoring community science program see on a weekly basis.

But it’s not all bad. Adams said workers have seen their most recent graduate, Porkchop, at least three times since the three-flipped turtle left their waters and ventured out on her own.

Each time, they’re sure to say hello.